Wandering Spark - Part 57
"May I ask?"
"Try."
"How old are you?"
Clover shook his head:
"How do I tell you... It depends on the count. Ask me sometime later."
A dark shadow for a second extinguished the sunspot. Then the next one. Outside was flying a large bird, making circles around the island. Wingam.
"They're looking for us," Varan said.
The magician smiled.
"Let... Let's listen to you and just look into all holes. Maybe we’ll be lucky."
Varan quickly glanced at him.
"Don’t you think that I know where the hiding place is?"
"It would be easier if you knew," mumbled Clover.
The day was coming to the end.
They moved from stone to stone, now and then risking to fall down into the abyss. Varan was figuring out - how long will it take to fall on the bottom? You will have time to remember if not all your life, then, at least, its most bad moments...
They were founding holes in the rock without light, without a bottom, and the magician threw stones in them. The stones burned with bright fire against all the laws of nature, and they fell, illuminating the slimy walls, the faults, and cracks, and often went out without reaching the bottom. One time in a crevice has discovered the corpse of a large sea beast - Varan didn’t understand which.
The evening was approaching.
"Our plaiters won’t fly away?"
"They are trained to wait until the last. There was such a case, the owner forgot his plaiter on a rock, and it died from hunger – waiting for its rider..."
"You're joking," Varan smiled hesitantly.
"Yes, I do," the magician sighed. "A plaiter will wait until sunset, at sunset they will return to the feeding place, and this will be an alarm for the chief of the birdhouse..."
"I'm not afraid."
"I know. I'm not afraid either. I'm just tired... By the way, how do you breathe?"
"Badly."
"I understand... Soon you will return to your bottom lands. You will grow reps, work with the screw spring... You are a strange character. A pod that connects the upper and lower worlds... The explorer..."
Varan glanced worriedly at Clover: he thought that the magician was raving.
"Nothing." Clover ran a hand over his face. "Nothing... In this hole, we already looked, you see, I marked it. Let's try to go left. Can you climb somehow on that stone?
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